Former Commissioner: Should Cops Have College Degrees?
Former New York City Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly has proposed that requiring a four-year college degree for all police officers could reduce police abuses.
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Former New York City Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly suggested on Friday that requiring police officers to have a four-year college degree could reduce misconduct and abuses, Zaid Jilani reports for News Nation. “You can’t go anywhere in America, find a grade school teacher who doesn’t have a college degree. But I think the education level of police officers is way too low,” Kelly said.
Criminologist and former Memphis PD officer Thaddeus Johnson conducted a study on officers in the Baltimore Police Department and found that officers with some college education were 8-10 percent less likely to be involved in police shootings. However, Johnson cautioned that degree requirements should be accompanied by opportunities for officers without a college education to be further educated and increased pay for well-educated officers.
